After several years of political work by New Jersey suffragists, they convinced the state legislature to hold a referendum on a woman suffrage amendment to the state constitution. The referendum was held in October 1915, when the proposed amendment was defeated by the male voters. this chart documents, on a county by county basis, how the New Jersey electorate voted. Referenda, similar to New Jersey’s, were also defeated in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts that year. thereafter, many suffragists abandoned their focus on state constitutional reform in preference of the federal woman suffrage amendment that would become the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.